Professional Mentoring Unpicked #6

This blog, the next in my short series exploring the key aspects of professional mentoring, unpicks and challenges the suggested definition of the mentee status.

Key Aspect #6: Typically (but not always) Less Experienced

“While traditionally focused on junior individuals, mentorship can also benefit those transitioning careers or taking on new leadership roles. The key is a difference in relevant experience.”

The implied caveat and parenthesis are well placed here.

In the first few weeks of launching my mentoring service, I received enquiries from, and had exploratory conversations with, LnD and other professionals at different stages of their career journey.

As a result, I am now working with several mentees and we’re exploring the following themes:

• professional mobility,

• recognition of and reward for specialism/skills,

• anxiety about future of L&D and roles & skills therein,

• direction, focus, and development of additional/alternative skills

• understanding of current themes and activity in UK L&D and abroad

• networking, connection, community

…and they are NOT segmented by age or experience.

Indeed, I have been struck by how these topics and concerns resonate and repeat across the supposed experiential generations.

What they all have in common is a desire to develop, to learn and to progress in their careers.

It’s my privilege to have been invited to work with each of them and to continue supporting them achieve clarity and direction.

If you think you could benefit from a non-judgemental, objective and external professional partnership, as described above, wherever you may be on your career trajectory, or recognise yourself in any of the themes above, do contact me for a no-obligation exploratory chat.

My contact details here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niallgavin/

Professional Mentoring Unpicked #5

Here is the next blog in my short series exploring the key aspects of mentoring others as a professional mentor.

Today I’m unpicking Key Aspect #5: Trust, Open Communication, and Mutual Respect.

“These are the foundational elements of a successful mentoring relationship. Without them, the relationship is unlikely to be effective.”

My take: Neither trust nor respect are given randomly. They are both earned.

Mentor and mentee must establish a working relationship which allows them both to be seen and to be
heard, non-judgementally and with the focus on the mentee’s development.

In an organisation’s internal mentoring programme, some of those conditions are already in place and established in the business structure. Some prior knowledge of each other may well already exist, trusted or otherwise, and an understanding of the business, the culture and the language pre-exists.

The challenge – and the opportunity - for the external mentor is to demonstrate to the mentee that they have the empathy and the experience required to support them from an external perspective, untrammelled by being embedded in the employer organisation, and informed by different professional experiences and perspectives.

The mentee should be reassured that any conversations are being held in a safe space. And that the mentor should be able to ask the difficult questions, be able to invite the mentee to open up in ways that they may not have felt able to do with an internal mentor or indeed, at all.

Agreeing to enter that relationship requires a preparedness to commit to the process, i.e. contracting, a mutual understanding about why and what the mentee is seeking support with and a mutual willingness to communicate openly and honestly, face to face or online, throughout.

Then the work can start.

Professional Mentoring Unpicked #4

This is the next blog in my short series exploring the key aspects of mentoring others as a professional mentor.

Today I’m looking at Key Aspect 4: Skills, Knowledge, Career, and Personal Growth

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

“Mentorship encompasses a holistic view of professional development, including technical skills, industry knowledge, career advancement, and even personal attributes that contribute to professional success.”

Hmmm… how to write something about this that doesn’t sound like self-aggrandisement…

How about this?

I’ve been in Learning and Development for over 35 years – and I’m still waiting to be found out!

Seriously, I came to L&D late, having been a professional actor for some 12 years. In that time, I only acted for about four of those years; for the rest of that time – as my blog page header says – I was many other things, fruit-picker, postman, delivery driver, barman, audio typist/temp, ‘industrial overload’, professional actor, Office Manager, Business Owner, Trainer, IT Training Manager, Head of Technology Assisted Learning and latterly, Learning Consultant with the CIPD and Accreditation Mentor with the LPI. Meanwhile becoming a husband and father of two.

The common thread here was me trying to earn a living and ‘having a go’ at whatever opportunities presented themselves to achieve and sustain that objective. Along the way, I picked up a raft of transferrable skills and have used some or all of them at different stages of my career.

Resilience, flexibility, adaptability, learning, unlearning, leading, sharing, and yes, even performing.

And all the while, waiting to be found out, to be exposed as unqualified, inexperienced, delusional… Imposter phenomena, anyone?

And yet, here we are. Now I’m at the ‘late career/flexible working’ stage, it feels right to be bringing the skills and knowledge developed over the years into my role now as a professional mentor, supporting others on their career journeys.

There is no such thing now as a job for life. We all need to be able to flex, skill up, reskill, recognise our strengths and our areas for development, and take responsibility for our careers – never more so than now.

Let me invite you to take a reflective look back at your career journey so far. How much of it was intentional, planned, achieved? What impact have you had to date? What skills and personal attributes have got you this far?

And how often have you had to roll with the punches, get derailed, start again? What are you doing to prepare for an uncertain professional job market and the different roles and responsibilities therein? What are your transferrable skills? What’s missing?

Let me know if I can help you answer some of those questions and support your career journey.

#Mentoring #PersonalDevelopment #LnD #HR #ProfessionalMentoring #Skills #Impact

 

 

Professional Mentoring Unpicked #3

This is the promised next blog in a series where I’m unpicking each of the previously defined aspects of professional Mentoring (see my earlier articles and blogs on this).

The overarching description says, “This relationship is typically characterized by trust, open communication, mutual respect, and a focus on the Mentee's goals and development”.

So, let’s unpick Key Aspect 3: Focus on the Mentee's Development

“The relationship is centred on the Mentee's specific needs, goals, and aspirations. It's not about the Mentor's agenda.”

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

And the critical Mentor skill here is listening.

For the Mentor/Mentee relationship to be fruitful and for the Mentee to get the benefit of the conversations with the Mentor, there must be a mutual understanding of why they are happening in the first place.

There must be clearly articulated ‘Success Factors’ agreed, whereby both parties are clear about the Mentee’s goals. And there must be an agreement as to what the shift will be, and how that change has moved the dial towards or has achieved the Mentee aim.

They key point here is that the Mentee owns the outcomes. The role as an independent Mentor is to help them along the path to achieving those, to suggest, challenge, support and encourage them to realise their ambitions.

How.

After an initial – and free – exploratory conversation and agreement to proceed, I share a template Mentoring Agreement document with the client and ask them to populate it before our first session, in terms of Purpose: Why are we entering into this relationship?, and Success Criteria: What will success look like?, wherein the Mentee can articulate their aims and aspirations.

I review this doc for alignment with the discussion we had in the exploratory session, suggest any tweaks and/or seek clarity about their intent, and finally we agree the number of sessions needed and over how long a period.

This is a dynamic document and is open to change at any time in the relationship, as successes are achieved or change, Mentee insights unfold and new goals are added.

As the overarching description says, “It’s not about the Mentor’s agenda”.

Then the work begins. More on this later.

Finally:

I see a lot of talk in L&D and HR about Mentoring, mostly couched in terms of colleague or manager support. i.e. internal, business/employer focus. What I don’t see so much of is the role of the external, independent Mentor, with the additional advantage of more multi- and/or cross-sectoral experience and ideas.

That would be me.

Look out for my next article on the 4^th key characteristic of the professional Mentor - Skills, Knowledge, Career, and Personal Growth, next week.

#ProfessionalMentoring #PersonalDevelopment #LnD #HR #Mentor

Professional Mentoring Unpicked #2

Photo by Masjid MABA on Unsplash

I wrote a couple of posts at the end of August into September, on the practice of #ProfessionalMentoring and the key elements that underpin it. This is the next post of the short series wherein I'm reflecting on and unpicking each of those aspects and how they inform my role as such a Mentor.

Key Aspect 2 - Guidance, Support, and Encouragement:

“The role of a professional mentor goes beyond simply giving advice. It involves active support and positive reinforcement.”

I see my role here being to help the mentee recognise the potential they have still to unlock, to build their confidence, help them celebrate wins along the way, and to stand with them when things get tough.

Some of my clients need support in raising their voice, internally and externally. We’re working on them showing up in the workplace, emphasising their own effectiveness and impact, sometimes being confident enough to say ‘no’.

In some instances, we’re working on them developing an external voice and presence, finding their tribe and engaging in discussion and debate whilst building relationships with fellow practitioners and other, more experienced practitioners, thinkers and commentators – online and face to face.

I’m listening and watching, amplifying and commenting publicly and also providing individual feedback and encouragement privately.
 
Some of my clients are people I consider to be my peers, in respect of career history, experience, seniority and – dare I say it - longevity, whilst others are at an earlier stage of their professional career.

I meet each of them where they are and we work out from there accordingly.

If any of the above sounds of interest and you think you could benefit from some professional mentor support, feel free to contact me for a no-obligation exploratory conversation, at niallgavinuk@outlook.com or via LinkedIn https://lnkd.in/eKGzSBz8

 
#Mentorship #Leadership #ProfessionalDevelopment #CareerGrowth